Is this The end of Humanity

[noisetonepause]

Four reasons you don't exist

Self is illusion, music's divine

KAPOW!

[hoffman2k]

I read a cool book a while back.
"The age of spiritual machines" by ray kurzweil
This dude work with artificial intelligence and is involved in the creation of neural networks.

http://www.kurzweilai.net

The law of acceleration predicts that machines are evolving quicker then humans.
So the next logical step would be to upload our mind/soul to whatever medium you wish.
You could travel around as an e-mail attachment.

I'm pretty sure the idea for movies like the matrix came from actual research in AI.

Virtual reality is not that far away. And researchers are decoding a new part of the brain each day. Eventually they will be able to reverse engineer an electronic brain.

Don't get the first model though. (you don't want the kinks)

Cheers

[evoid]

I believe they might become able duplicate your conscienceness, but it won't be you.
Think about it. What if they "download" you into a computer, while you're still alive, then you'd exist twice? Then which one are you, the computer version or the human version? The human version of course. So after the human version dies, you don't live on as the computer version, even though it might be an exact duplicate of yourself at the time they downloaded it.
What if they copy your data in 3 such machines at the same time... You're not all of these copies at the same time, or you?

fall, try "The Golden Age" by John C. Wright

[noisetonepause]

I don't think it will be possible to seperate the mind from its senses without seriously affecting it. Our reality is perception, not, err, reality. And think about how weird changing what you perceive (moving to another country, time zone or climate, communicating in another language, etc etc) affects you and how confusing it can seem. Imagine changing the very way you perceive. Oddness.

Who knows, though.

-Paws

[elemental]

I read that in the paper on sunday.

what a load of tosh.

I did my degree in artificial intelligence, and no matter what this prof says the ability to download your brain is pure science fiction.

There are more interconnections in the human brain than stars in the universe.
How can this amount of information be stored in a computer??

And besides this, there is the whole issue of mind/body/spirit. Downloading the state of your brain would be taking a snapshot of the body aspect of mind, not mind itself... and for those who may be more spiritually inclined, there is the concept of mind/spirit existing outside the body, the buddhist concept of continuation through many lifes etc...

And then there is the question of what is consciousness..???

[olafmol]

a little bit like that in 2001 everybody would be able to fly to the moon and have a nice holiday-home there?

[Pitch Black]

A good book on this subject is

Great Mambo Chicken and the Trans-Human Condition
By Ed Regis

It was written in the early 90's. Its a very witty pop-science examination of what he calls "fin-de-siecle hubristic mania" ie this whole shemozzle of uploading ourselves and faxing ourselves to the other side of the galaxy. It has a very good chapter on Evil Kinevil.



[edit] Well waddaya know, Amazon are selling this and Ray Kurzweil's The Age of Spiritual Machines as bundle for $27.67

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... 4?v=glance

[Angstrom]

It seems unlikely to me that we will 'up' load our brain data in the next 100 years.

Although it is possible that at some point in th efuture we will be able to 'transfer' data in our conciousness to a new system.
But, I think we could safely say that any system affects its reality (quantum observer), so a new system 'with the same thoughts' woul dpercieve things differently and then have different thoughts - and be different!

For those with an interest in philosophy - Nick Bostrom's 'simulation argument' is great. You may think it is standard Matrix-think ... but it goes way beyond that.
http://www.simulation-argument.com/

ABSTRACT. This paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true:
(1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage;
(2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof);
(3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation.

It follows that the belief that there is a significant chance that we will one day become posthumans who run ancestor-simulations is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation. A number of other consequences of this result are also discussed.

[Kodama]

If you download your brain into anything as your body dies, you are dead and an exact copy of you is born.

It's still death either way...





Same thing as teleportation......

[A DJ]

finally a topic i can dig....if i only finished college



wooow

but do keep on

good stuff

[mikemc]

the greatest story along these lines is "The Machine Stops" by EM Forster

http://brighton.ncsa.uiuc.edu/~prajlich/forster.html

in the future, the Machine is Everything, the Book holds all Knowledge, and All are One in the Machine.

[adhmzaiusz]

so what they are claiming is that they can capture and transplant your soul(your soul in this case meaning your own consciousness that is locked in your body) into a computer. how would they know how to locate such an abstract intangible concept

The answer is simple, this "soul" is nothing but electricity. We are machines with nerve wires and hardware components like the heart, liver etc. We utilize fluid called H2O like cars utilize oil. We are mechanical in our own way and like a microwave, a computer, a calculator, television and on and on....we operate with that invisible energy source called electricity.
Just like satellites transmit invisible waves to your radio and television (which can be stored on DVDs, Cassettes etc.), our mind transmits consciousness which can also be stored. How do you suppose we remember things? It is just a matter of knowing WHERE and HOW it all works.
OK....back to that invisible energy called sound

Someone lying in a hospital in a persistent vegetative state might be an example of the humans merely being complex machines theory. But when consciousness is present, then your argument falls flat on its face.

its amazing that this post is pretty far ahead now from this part of the stream-

but anyways, when im saying your soul i believe that it is your brain and the way it processes reality which determines who you are because of its certain abilities as well as the defects which makes you have certain charicteristics. Such characteristics like a dislexia make you shy or another example wit or social intellect can make you a charismatic person, with no shame. Such brain capabilities tie into our feelings who also make some of us consider the soul, because experiences out of grief or happiness or any emotion reflect who we are.

The brain IS the receptor of reality, and to clone how your brain has evolved is impossible. it is like a muscle which you flex when it learns. it grows. you can reconfigure it by discipline. It is the device which determines how you contribute your sum of experiences back to reality. through your senses which are basically your input devices it is your processor which reflects how you process information which sums up your character.

That aside, memory is the companion to the brain because the brain uses memories to evaluate your response to the circumstances of any situation. But, the memory alone is not enough to be considered a soul. I cant consider my filing cabinet to be that which decided my decisions to do my taxes, or my filed reciepts to be my love of spending. Memories may be the evidence of some experience we have had, but it is not that which experiences in the ever flowing present. (i hope im making sense.) But it is all in the flow of the present where your soul exists not in the storage or the past. without your receptor a bunch of storage is just as useful as a suitcase sitting in a closet. Conscience is symbiotic with input. Constant input.

Have you ever heard the story of the man who was granted by an angel to have a magic troll(or something like that) who would do anything for the man no matter what it was, on the condition that he always had something for him to do? If he ran out of things to do, the troll would grow bigger and harrass the man for something to do or else troll would eat him. Basically in short, the man made him walk his dog, troll'd come back, want somethin else, so the man says, "build me a house," so troll does it, the man runs out of ideas, and troll is getting impatient growing bigger and hungry. He's almost ready to eat the man. so the man prays to the angel and who gave him the troll and is freaking out that he's gonna get eaten, so the angel gives him a curly hair. "tell him to straigten this when you've got nothin for him to do, and he'll be entertained forever!" so the guy gave the troll the hair and then 'straigt it on the double! when your done ill have something else for you to do." so the troll became the guys beotch and he learned the way of the troll. so for those who don't get it, the troll is the metaphor for the mind, who craves activity to remain sane. the hair is the thing that keeps the mind entertained, whatever that may be to you, in our case i guess we can all mainly say music --i read that in a tom brown jr. book.

hope that all makes sense

p.s. i think before they could reach technology to download your mind, they will sync your mind wirelessly to the internet. i would find it more plausible if they designed some device that would manipulate your brain waves into seeing webpages in your mind and connecting your thoughts and memories to other people that way, but downloading your whole stream of conciousness is ridiculous

[anonymouse]

what a load of tosh.

I did my degree in artificial intelligence, and no matter what this prof says the ability to download your brain is pure science fiction.

There are more interconnections in the human brain than stars in the universe.
How can this amount of information be stored in a computer??

This reminds me the famous flawed prediction attributed to Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943; "The world will only ever need 5 or 6 really big computers".

As wrong as Watson may have seemed 5 years ago, maybe someday he will proven correct after all. Eventually the world will just be one big distributed computer ... with many times more interconnections than stars in the universe. Plenty to back-up the world population's consciousness.

Here are some more interesting predictons:


* "I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year." -- The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957.

* "But what...is it good for?" -- Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.

* "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." -- Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977.

* "640K ought to be enough for anybody." -- Attributed to Bill Gates, 1981, but believed to be an urban legend.

* "This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us." -- Western Union internal memo, 1876.

* "The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?" -- David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s.

* "While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially it is an impossibility." -- Lee DeForest, inventor.

* "The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C', the idea must be feasible." -- A Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service. (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)

* "Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?" -- H. M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927.

* "I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face and not Gary Cooper." -- Gary Cooper on his decision not to take the leading role in "Gone With the Wind."

* "A cookie store is a bad idea. Besides, the market research reports say America likes crispy cookies, not soft and chewy cookies like you make." -- Response to Debbi Fields' idea of starting Mrs. Fields' Cookies.

* "We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out." -- Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.

* "Radio has no future. Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible. X-rays will prove to be a hoax." -- William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, British scientist, 1899.

* "So we went to Atari and said, 'Hey, we've got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we'll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we'll come work for you.' And they said, 'No.' So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, 'Hey, we don't need you. You haven't got through college yet.'" -- Apple Computer Inc. founder Steve Jobs on attempts to get Atari and HP interested in his and Steve Wozniak's personal computer.

* "If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can't do this." -- Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives for 3-M "Post-It" Notepads.

* "It will be years -- not in my time -- before a woman will become Prime Minister." -- Margaret Thatcher, 1974.

* "I see no good reasons why the views given in this volume should shock the religious sensibilities of anyone." -- Charles Darwin, The Origin Of Species, 1869.

* "With over 50 foreign cars already on sale here, the Japanese auto industry isn't likely to carve out a big slice of the U.S. market." -- Business Week, August 2, 1968.

* "That Professor Goddard with his 'chair' in Clark College and the countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution does not know the relation of action to reaction, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react--to say that would be absurd. Of course, he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools." -- 1921 New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard's revolutionary rocket work. The remark was retracted in the July 17, 1969 issue.

* "You want to have consistent and uniform muscle development across all of your muscles? It can't be done. It's just a fact of life. You just have to accept inconsistent muscle development as an unalterable condition of weight training." -- Response to Arthur Jones, who solved the "unsolvable" problem by inventing Nautilus.

* "Ours has been the first, and doubtless to be the last, to visit this profitless locality." -- Lt. Joseph Ives, after visiting the Grand Canyon in 1861.

* "Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You're crazy." -- Workers whom Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859.

* "Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau." -- Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929.

* "There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will." -- Albert Einstein, 1932.

* "The bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives." -- Admiral William Leahy, U.S. Atomic Bomb Project.

* "Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value." -- Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre.

* "There will never be a bigger plane built." -- A Boeing engineer, after the first flight of the 247, a twin engine plane that holds ten people.

* "Everything that can be invented has been invented." -- Attributed to Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899, but known to be an urban legend.

* "Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction." -- Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872.

* "The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon." -- Sir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon, appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria 1873.

[MrYellow]

My thoughts exactly.

How anyone can say something is impossible after living thru the dawn of
information age is beyond me. Shit the industrial age was only 100 years
ago.... Stuff is speeding up exponentially.... More has happened in the last
10 years of our lives then what happened in 100 years of our grandparents
lives.

-Ben

[anonymouse]

i think before they could reach technology to download your mind, they will sync your mind wirelessly to the internet. i would find it more plausible if they designed some device that would manipulate your brain waves into seeing webpages in your mind and connecting your thoughts and memories to other people that way, but downloading your whole stream of conciousness is ridiculous

On Feb. 22 in the Journal of Neural Engineering, Daniel Palanker, Alexander Vankov and Phil Huie from the Department of Ophthalmology and the Hansen Experimental Physics Laboratory and Stephen Baccus from the Department of Neurobiology published a design of an optoelectronic retinal prosthesis system that can stimulate the retina with resolution corresponding to a visual acuity of 20/80—sharp enough to orient yourself toward objects, recognize faces, read large fonts, watch TV and, perhaps most important, lead an independent life. The researchers hope their device may someday bring artificial vision to those blind due to retinal degeneration. They are testing their system in rats, but human trials are at least three years away.

So basically, we are only a few years away from streaming video directly to the brain. So probably Ableton Live 8 will not require a monitor!